We must start out this update with a HUGE shout out and big hugs to Aunt Jo and Jenny, Jill’s wonderful family in Colorado Springs. After spending 7 nights in various hotels of various levels of comfort (or lack thereof), staying with Aunt Jo was a highlight of the trip. Not only because of the awesome homemade dinner, plentiful beer and shared Game of Thrones Geekery but also because Dianne and her children Emily and Olivia stopped by. While Charley loved getting to spend time giggling and cooing with each of them, we all got to spend time together, sharing a great meal, laughing hysterically calling out our favorite Ted Cruz memes (have you seen this) and commiserating over our disgust of Trump. It’s interesting how the election has been a pretty common topic of debate with each town we visit. However, considering all of the Trump and Cruz signs and stickers we’ve seen along the way, well, let’s just say that we’re glad we didn’t put our Bernie sign up in the car.

Back to life on the road…

On day 8 I can affirm that there is a hard to identify smell that has developed in the car. To me, it smells like a high school boys locker room (this is not a pleasant smell). To Jill, it smells like a dirty diaper (an obviously unpleasant smell). I blame Wally for it of course.

Speaking of Wally, he is faring better after spending the better part of a day running around Aunt Jo’s big backyard and sidling up next to Jennys’s 10 yr old pup, Maddy. Maddy was a tough nut for Wally to crack but he’s a persistent guy and we saw a bit of a love connection happen last night. That and his tummy seems to be back on track. The chicken and rice diet seems to have helped that as well. What dog wouldn’t be a little green after being in a car driving 8 hrs a day, right?

Jill said today – “it’s weird that this is starting to feel normal, being on the road and in a new town everyday. It’s hard to imagine being in one place in our own home again.” My wife, the gypsy, ladies and gentlemen.

So, today we took I-25 to I-70 west which is a short 400 miles (gulp) to Green River, Utah, which is the culinary capital of Utah. Kidding. And we got a true road test with the weather we hit. Our initial ascent into the Rockies was met with a ton of fog and rain and probably 20% visibility. As we continued to climb and wind our way in and out of the mountains, Wally begin to whine. We stopped and let him out briefly to compose himself. Ascame out of the Eisenhower tunnel we emerged into a massive hail storm. It was pretty fierce andheavy but Jill motored on.

The drive from Colorado through Utah is pretty beautiful. While Wally wasn’t a fan of the winding roads, we’d continuously round a bend and open onto a massive expanse of land as far as the eye can see with huge valleys backed up into mountains and mesas. This is the West that you expect.

After a few hours we wound up pulling into Richfield, Utah at the Holiday Inn Express Inn & Suites. Richfield is a town in the middle of nowhere with nothing going on but it is quite a majestic nowhere. Flanked by mountains and desert, Richfield has spent some time and money making this a place that is easy for travelers to roll in and out of. Road weary we ordered take out from a place down the street, watched the tail end of the Warriors game and slipped into a deep sleep.

In the morning, we hit yet another free continental breakfast (we are experts at these now), and fueled up on too much coffee and pastries and began our journey to Las Vegas to visit with the Seagraves. Can’t wait to get there and see Jan and Jim and California is getting that much closer!